The Land Between Solar Systems

Double murder

2011-10-19T21:05:00.000-07:00

Straight and to the point, the title says it all. This is probably one of the grimmest and most messed up dreams I've had. Even more so than this dream.

One of the weirdest things about it (other than the content, which I will get to shortly) is the way it kept shifting perspectives. At some points I was watching it happen, as though it was a TV program, at other times, I was an active participant, and at other moments, it was as though I was reading some kind of script which described the motives, thoughts and actions of its characters. I'll try to explain this as best as I can throughout.

The dream started with me watching a man being killed. He walked past a white car and the man in the car rolled down the window, grabbed the man who was walking past and put him in some kind of headlock where he was caught by his neck and couldn't move. The man in the car then whispered the word "Dead!" three times into the ear of the man he'd grabbed in a voice that was genuinely chilling. Eventually, the man he was holding collapsed and died. At this point, I went from being an observer to a participant, only I appeared to be following some kind of script. I became aware of the fact that the man who was killed was connected to me in some way as was his killer, and that he would be after me next.

I then remember reading some sort of script that told me that the character I was playing needed to lay low for a while, which I did by returning to the place where I lived in this dream, which was actually my mother's house in real life. I got to the house, locked the front door and closed all the curtains. I also make a point of crouching below the windows so nobody could see me outside (in case the killer chanced by and saw me). However upon locking up, I suddenly knew that I was not alone in the house. I was then suddenly in what would be my mother's room in this house, I stepped out into the corridor and saw a woman walking away from me. She had also been sent after me by the killer. I sneaked up behind her with a coathanger, grabbed her from behind and pushed her onto the ground in what used to be my old bedroom. Once on the floor, I started interrogating her.

I asked her why she was here, who she was and what she wanted, but she would not answer my questions even with the tip of a coathanger pressed against her neck (it was all I had). This is where it gets really fucked up. I then tore off this woman's underclothes and threatened to rape her. Thing is, I had no intention of actually following through with the act, I just wanted to scare her into talking, but that didn't work either as she just threatened to tell the police(!). At this point I felt worried and ashamed: worried at the possible outcome of her telling the police (even though she was colluding with a murderer herself), and ashamed at what I had become. Anyway, I now realised I had nothing to lose and murdered the woman. There was a suitcase nearby which I emptied with the intent of forcing her body into it. The last thing I remember doing was cutting up a magazine, which was in some way connected to me killing this woman. I woke up around this point.

POSSIBLE MEANING: This is where it gets interesting. I consulted a dream dictionary regarding murder in dreams. The symbols appear to be spot on. The day before, my girlfriend and I had an argument. I'm going to see her this weekend (she lives out of town) and she wanted me to go to church with her the day I would be leaving. I explained that I couldn't because it would make me late for my train home, which she knew would be the case. However, she got upset with me anyway and we ended up fighting, which we hadn't done for months. There used to be a time though when we argued all the time, every week in fact. It used to stress me out because it seemed as though she like the drama. To my mind, it didn't bode well that two people in a long distance relationship should be arguing all the time (especially over what was mostly petty, trifling nonsense), but she seemed to like it. She'd either pick fights or goad me into one by saying things that would provoke or upset me. Anyway, one of the last big fights we had (around my birthday), I almost broke up with her which I think caused her to stop all this drama, hence us not having fought again up until now.

After this fight, we exchanged a few angry texts and I said that I wasn't going to come up to see her anymore. I didn't really mean it though, I was just very angry that she'd started what I saw to be another stupid argument (I thought we'd got past that) and just wanted to get at her. It turns out the real reason she got upset was because I'd resisted going to church with her in the past and this just brought that back (typical woman in that she didn't just say so at the time but just flew off the handle instead). Anyway, this whole incident got me very riled because it put a dampener on what was going to be a good weekend. Two days before going up to see her for her birthday, she starts an argument, just like she did two days before my birthday. It bought it all back to me.

Now, I think the part in the dream where I threatened to rape the woman just to scare her into talking symbolised me threatening not to go up to see my girlfriend on her birthday. In both instances, I had no intention of following through with the act, it was just a bluffing tactic which failed to work. The dream dictionary symbols regarding anger were represented by the murders in this dream. It states that murder represents the resistance to something; in this case, my girlfriend's insistence in trying to coerce me into religion (if you've been following my other dreams, you should already know why that's not going to work). It also represents the potential end of a relationship. I write this dream at 6AM in the morning, hours before I'm to get on a train to go up and see her for what may be the last time. We have reached an impasse. She has become a hardcore fundamentalist, I lost my faith some time ago. We are headed in two opposite directions. I think I have to put an end to this relationship, and this dream appears to be alluding to just that.

It's a shame because, silly fights notwithstanding, we had something good, but hey, religion divides.

Fire in the mind/True form

2011-10-04T01:06:00.000-07:00

I had this dream not long after falling asleep in the early hours of the morning.

From what I remember, I was at my mother's house in my old bedroom where I spent much of my childhood. It was empty save my old bunk bed and stacks of magazines I'd dumped there. For some reason, I was reading the magazines in the room. I also had a gun with me with the intent of shooting anybody who walked in on me.

The dream then changed and I was standing outside in the back garden of the same house. It was night time and al the lights were off in the house save the kitchen (which is accessed by going in through the back door), and my bedroom (which can also be seen from the outside from where I was).

My sister was there with me and so was my mother's gossipy neighbour (I mention her in another dream on here a couple of years back). The neighbour ran over and said she could smell burning, and kept pointing up at my bedroom window; she seemed convinced that someone was up there setting fire to the place. I panicked and decided to go in and investigate, taking my gun with me (I don't know what I had a gun, I just did). My sister followed after me, but didn't come up the stairs with me to my room. When I got there, I found the lights on, but nobody was there. There was also smoke, but no fire, and no discernible source. Even so, I was convinced someone was there, so I explored the other rooms (bathroom and the other two bedrooms), but found no-one. Also, the other rooms were in complete darkness.

The dream switched again and I was back downstairs talking to my mother, who was a different woman in this dream. This time, the downstairs part of the house had also changed and the lights were now on. I also had a step dad and step brother (both of whom were very fat), which I do not have IRL. My mum was telling me that last time she saw me, she didn't feel we connected anymore. I said I was sorry she felt that way and embraced her, saying that I'd try harder.

Then, an argument flared up between my step dad and I, and my mum joined in. I angrily retorted and told both of them that I was leaving and not coming back and that I never wanted to see either of them ever again. I walked out into the street (it was still dark outside) and started walking up the road. My step brother kept on taunting me, so I told him to "Piss off". My stepdad then started chasing me up the road, and for a fat guy, he could run.

Anyway, I ran from him until I got to the corner of the road, where I heard a voice say "It's time to show them your true form". I turned around to face my stepdad and said "I'm not the person you think I am" and then started to transform into a huge beast. I felt myself growing in size and strength and my stepdad and brother backed off and started shooting at me, but because of my size, the bullets had no effect. I used my strength and size to push them back, but I wasn't trying to kill them, I just wanted them to back off and leave me alone. That was it.

POSSIBLE MEANING: I've been having a lot of issue in my life with religion and religious people lately. You see, many years ago I used to be a Christian myself, but I deconverted, and this has become more apparent in the last few years, my apostasy strengthening the more I learn about how twisted and corrupt Christianity truly is. The more I learn, the less I want to do with it. However I am almost sandwiched by it. My mother and sister are believers, and so is my girlfriend of 2 years (who suddenly went hardcore this summer, as represented by this dream). I recently told my girlfriend, my sister found out through another person blabbing and the only person who does not know is my mother, and there's no way I could tell her.

I think this dream touches on the whole thing of me "coming out" to my mother (that is "showing my true form"). Me being chased around I think represents the Christians in my life who do know trying to draw me back into it. In the dream, I resist the people who tried to shoot me, but I didn't want to kill them, just get them to back off. Similarly, I do not wish to try to deconvert my girlfriend, sister or anyone; they have their own paths to walk, and if they leave the faith, they should do so because of themselves and not because of me. This I think is represented by me trying not to kill the people shooting at me.

Not of this earth

2011-07-31T15:26:00.000-07:00

I've had a number of similar dreams to this one in the past, but for some reason, I've never written any down.

This dream started out in a friends bedroom. Just behind his headboard was a large window which seemed to lead into another dimension. I stepped through this window and found myself looking over a vast cityscape from above. Whenever I've had similar dreams, I seem to fly around until I wanted to land, and that's what I did here.

When I landed, it was night time and people were milling about on the city streets. I saw a crowd of people in fromnt of me and tried talking to them, but as soon as people saw me, they walked off and wanted nothing to do with me. It reminded me of the last out of body dream I had in that people seemed surprised when I asked where I was and acted like I was some sort of freak to be shunned.

I ended up in a shopping arcade. I walked past a food stall run by a young woman who, upon seeing me hung up a 'Closed' sign and gave me a look of straight faced defiance. The atmosphere in this place was cold everywhere I went. Nobody would talk to me, shops wouldn't serve me, and all I wanted was to know where I was.

Later I found myself going through a turnstile as if to catch a train. There was a woman with me; she was in her early 40s and was the only person in the entire place (save a freakish alien looking thing that tried to kiss me) that spoke to me. It turns out she was in the same predicament as me (being avoided by everyone), so we became friends through that.

The two of us walked through the turnstile as we had "trains" to catch; apparently we were from different worlds and were both strangers in this place in which we'd found ourselves, which might explain the coldness of the others (it could well be that they didn't speak out language and therefore could not understand us). Anyway, when we got through the turnstile we found ourselves staring out across a beautifully scenic expanse. The sky was pink and orange with a few clouds in the distance. The sun shone across the panorama with a literally golden glow. The beauty of the view was otherworldly, unlike anything from "this" world and therefore hard to describe. To return to our home worlds, we had to take off and fly, which we did, both going our separate ways.

POSSIBLE MEANING: It has been suggested that some dreams are like a form of inter-dimensional travel and that as our physical bodies rest, our consciousness goes elsewhere. I happen to believe there is some truth to that, and in this and similar dreams, I'm convinced that I was in some world beyond this dimension and that the people I saw knew I was not from their world, which makes me wonder what they might have seen or heard of me from their own POV.

Recurring dreams: Hotel

2011-07-31T13:30:00.000-07:00

Saturday 30th July

Another hotel dream. Interestingly, the hotel itself has showed up in some of my previous hotel dreams.

In this dream, I was staying in a room on the 2nd floor, and the 3rd floor was haunted. I had another dream just like this not long ago, but I don't think I remembered to write it down. In the dream, I just avoided the 3rd floor, but I eventually had to go there for something.

When I got there, I went to a particular room. There was a man there who looked a bit like Ricky Gervais, but with stubble. He wore a long black trenchcoat. He was talking to another man in the room about my girlfriend and got annoyed when I interrupted. He told me I was getting into things I didn't understand. The scene then switched to my girlfriend being out in the street somewhere, but I don't remember the details anymore unfortunately.

The dream then went back to the hotel, and I discovered that there was actually a 4th floor, but it was not for guests. It was for staff use only and was used for maintenance purposes. I was with a group of about 3 other people including a short South American woman in her 40s. She seemed to know all about the 4th floor. I think she may have been a cleaner at the hotel or something. For some reason, I wanted to see the 4th floor, so she let me. She also made a point of telling me that if any guests were caught up there, they would be thrown out, so I had to be careful. That's about all I can remember.

This was certainly unlike any of my previous 4th floor dreams as the strangeness appeared to be happening on floor 3 this time (though one of my earlier dreams did have the spookiness happening in the basement). It was also intriguing that the 4th floor in this dream was out of bounds.

POSSIBLE MEANING: The out of bounds 4th floor is easy. I've been playing a game called Last Window on the Nintendo DS which has you playing an ex detective staying at an apartment complex that was once a hotel. In this game, there are mysterious things happening on the 4th floor, too (which in itself spooked me out a little bit; after having all those dreams, I then play a game with a similar plot - WTF!?). Anyway, that part of the dream seems to have been derived from the actual game as some parts of it are similar.

The Ricky Gervais lookalike was noteworthy, too. That dream character seemed to know stuff about me and I felt that he knew me well, much like the being in the Lionheart dream, but not anywhere near as powerful (the guy in this dream was definitely human, whereas the Lionheart being had only assumed a human form). Also, unlike the Lionheart dream, this character didn't seem especially concerned with me as an individual, I felt as though he was just a messenger of sorts but had no interest in me beyond that. He was just doing his "job". The thing with my girlfriend, I felt was definitely important, especially as it comes at a time when I've been having doubts about the future of our relationship.

Blinded by faith?

2011-06-12T04:50:00.000-07:00

In this dream, my girlfriend told me that she'd just had an accident that robbed her of her sight. Her eyes were covered with bandages because she'd just had an operation. She told me that some of her sight would eventually be restored, but that she'd never be able to see fully again and asked me if I still loved her and wanted to be with her.

I said yes.

POSSIBLE INTERPRETATION: My girlfriend has recently become very religious, going as far as to say that she no longer wants to "sin" by having pre-martial sex. We've been together 2 years. Her new church friends have also tried to split us up.

I think this dream refers to change in her beliefs. The blindness, I think represents the way I see her new found beliefs and the effect they have on her (blind faith). Her asking if I still wanted to be with her refers to the misgivings I have about all this, and the fact that it has seriously made me question the future of our relationship. I do love her, but this change has had serious consequences and has, in my opinion made what was very simple very complicated.

Even as I type this, I feel torn about us but sadly, religion destroys everything.

Shooting/Being shot

2011-05-05T14:12:00.000-07:00

I'm going to use this post to record 3 dreams, two of which I actually had last week on two separate evenings, but was not able to write down as I was away from home and didn't have access to a computer.

I'll start with the most recent dream (last night's) first.

I can't remember all the details, but in essence, I was a fugitive. I'd shot about 5 men in self defence. I was in some hideaway bunker somewhere and they climbed in to attack me and the small group of people with me (including a little boy I'll mention later on).

Having shot the men, I knew from that point that I was a wanted man and started running for my life. My intent was to leave the country. By this point, all the people who were with me earlier had gone their own separate ways except for the child, who remained with me. The boy cried a lot, saying he didn't want to be killed.

Later in the dream, I found myself at a hotel I've visited in a previous dream. I had a key given to me by a friend (someone I know in real life) who said I could hide out in his hotel room while I planned my next move. The hotel corridors were a veritable maze with many doors. For some reason, I was able to use my key on any door as I searched for my friend's room. However, every time I thought I'd found his room, it turned out to be a toilet or a store cupboard. I started to get agitated because if I couldn't find the room, I'd have nowhere to hide.

In the end, I found an infirmary at the end of a corridor and the little boy and I went to hide in there. There was a doctor's uniform in the room and I decided to change into it, thinking that I'd masquerade as a doctor if I couldn't find the room I wanted.

It all gets unclear after that, but the next thing I remember, I was speaking to my mother who did not know about the people I'd killed. She then learnt about the killings from a news report, but I tried convincing her that I was not the one responsible.

Shooting dream 1

In the first shooting dream from last week, I was in the back garden at my mum's house standing by the shed. I then became aware that there were snipers in the bushes at the end of the garden. They started shooting at me, so I ran into the house, through the hallway and out of the front door. I ran down the road and knew that the snipers were chasing me, so I wanted to find somewhere I could hide. The road started to get longer and longer all by itself.

Shooting dream 2

I was in some kind of urban neighbourhood. The dream started with me accidentally damaging someone's car as I ran past. It turned out the owner was part of some sort of gang, and he, along with his "crew" decided to chase my friends and I. We were running for a long time to escape them in this dream, as they followed us in their car, shooting at us as they drove.

In the end, we managed to lose them by going through someone's back garden. It was night time and they were throwing a party in the house.

Jenna

2011-04-13T06:39:00.001-07:00

This was an odd dream, not necessarily because of anything that happened in it, but because of the feeling it left me with when I awoke.

It started with me in an alleyway somewhere. A colleague from work was also there along with somebody else who used to work with us, only the ex-colleague was considerable younger than he is in real life. In the dream, he was about 13 years old, and was with about four other kids around the same age.

I said hello to my workmate and asked him what he was doing in my neck of the woods, but I can't remember his response too well.

Anyway, the next thing I know, the alleyway was suddenly full of teenagers and I remember thinking that my work colleague and myself were probably the oldest people here. With no reason to hang around, I decided to walk through the alleyway to find my way home. As I did, I came across a young ethnically Italian woman with shoulder length curly black hair and big green eyes. She was very beautiful. Her body language was very suggestive, and before I knew what happened, we were kissing. Even though it was a dream, I remember feeling the sensation of the kiss itself as though it were real.

The scene then changed and I was sitting at my desk at work. The office space was larger than it is in real life and the office decor was blue rather than white. I sat at my desk wishing the time away so I could go home, as I was bored. At this point, I seemed to be aware of the fact that I was dreaming and thought to myself "This feels just like a boring day at work". Suddenly, a lady in the office approached me and asked if I was seeing a girl named Jenna. I asked her to describe this person, and she described the woman I kissed in the alley. By this point, she was joined by another woman in the office, both of whom warned me to steer clear of this Jenna because she was bad news.

They told me that Jenna had two children, and I responded by saying I had no problems with dating a single mother. In response to this, they told me that Jenna was not a single mother because she was still with her partner, and that she had a reputation for getting involved with men on the side and that it never ended well. I wasn't the first and would not be the last.

All of a sudden, I had an overwhelming urge that something wasn't right. I became almost afraid and wanted to wake up there and then because I felt that something unpleasant was about to happen. Fortunately, I was able to wake up before it did.

Interestingly, I felt as though I'd met this Jenna woman before in another dream, but cannot for the life of me remember anything about it. I woke up from this dream feeling very unnerved and uneasy.

Sleeping in a haunted house

2011-03-08T14:21:00.000-08:00

In this dream, I found myself staying the night in a strange house (I didn't realise it was haunted until later on). I don't know why I was there, but I'd chosen to leave my flat and stay in this place for some reason.

When I arrived, the first thing I noticed was that it was unusually dark. I also heard a rustling sound coming from up the stairs in the house, and assumed it was another resident (I think it was meant to be some kind of shared house). I found my room (which was downstairs on the first left) and set up for the night.

After a while, I decided to go and investigate the noise from upstairs. I walked half way up the stairs (where again, there was very little light), and called out to whoever was up there. I heard no response, and by this point, the sounds I'd heard before had stopped. It was then that I "knew" (in the way you just seem to in dreams) that this was a haunted house.

At this realisation, I did not want to stay a second longer, so I went back downstairs to pack my things and leave. When I got back to my room, I tried to switch on the light, but it had stopped working. I was now in total darkness. This was my second indication that something was not right about this place.

I then groped around for my mobile phone and decided to use the light from that instead. I used to phone to help my find my things and pack them away in my bags - and I had LOTS of bags. As I was doing this, I thought to myself that as Plan B, I was going to call my sister and ask to stay the night at her place instead. Again, I didn't know why I didn't just go back to mine, but there you have it.

Anyway, as I packed, I contemplated my plan; I'd pack up, leave, then call my sister to let her know I was coming over. As I did this, I tried to keep an eye on the time because I didn't want to go over when it was too late in the evening. I suddenly woke up in the middle of my packing, as strange, haunting guitar music played in the background

POSSIBLE MEANING:

According to a very informative dream dictionary I often consult, most dreams refer to major incidents that occurred the day before, and I am confident this is the case with this particular dream.

The day before, I went to visit my siter at her place. She is not well at the moment, having been off work long-term sick with a condition called Myalgic Encephelomyelitis.

As someone who enjoys her work, she has not taken to this extended convalescence too well. Not only that, but my mother has the same condition. Watching both of them suffer with this has been a source of immense frustration for me. I've felt helpless seeing people I care about go through something like this whilst feeling totally and utterly helpless in being able to alleviate their plight.

Having consulted the aforementioned dream dictionary, I can see that the dream is addressing this issue directly. Houses, it can be said either relate to the dreamer or people close to them. In this case, I think it relates to me trying understand what my sister was going through, and perhaps the darkness of the house represented the "dark" mood I found her in the day before. Me wanting to go to her's, I think also alludes to my attempt to sympathise with what she is going through.

As for the haunted atmosphere, the dream dictionary I linked to lists feeling ineffective as a possible key phrase that relates to haunting. It appears to have some significance here because, as mentioned above, that is how I feelt in observing the suffering of someone close to me without being able to do anything about it. Luggage in the same dictionary points to "the burden of your responsibilities and emotional problems that follow you around" and whilst I do not consider my family a burden per se, what is an issue for me (as stated above) is being so helpless to alleviate their suffering. This feeling of helplessness literally "haunts" me.

So, this dream, I believe clearly points to the emotions I felt having seen my sister yesterday in her despondent state. I'm just glad my visit cheered her up. All I need to do now is think about how I can apply the message of this dream to the situation at hand.

Recurring dreams: Escape

2011-02-15T12:45:00.000-08:00

No this isn't a repost.

If you've been following, you've probably noticed that my last entry held the same theme. However, since writing it, I've had two more dreams based on escaping an undesirable place or situation so I've decided to compile what I've remembered from both here.

In the first, I was a spy of some description. I'd broken into somebody's home to steal some information that would help me crack an encrypted document they'd written. I entered their home with a bag that contained a laptop, some papers, and of course the document I wanted to crack. I looked around the house and found myself in the person's bedroom. The code I was looking for was hidden underneath the wallpaper, so I peeled a section off from the wall, and the information I needed to decrypt the document was right there.

I took photographs of the "writing on the wall" and gathered my things to leave. However, I took too long and by the time I was ready to vacate the property, the owner had showed up with his wife. I tried to shoot him with the gun I had, but it had no effect for some reason, then he told me that he was going to inform the police and have me arrested, and that he knew I was a spy. At this point, I panicked and in a manner only possible in dreams, I was able to rewind time to the moment I'd discovered the code, with the intention of packing up and leaving a lot more quickly than before, which I was able to do.

This time, I escaped the house before he showed up, and took off in my car just as his wife was getting out of his. I drove off and was able to escape in safety, to the strains of some sped up rock music.

In the second dream, I'd been taken captive in some strange place along with some other people. Our captors would taunt us by calling us names and basically making sport of us. They also had dogs they'd use to terrorise us. In this dream, I'd decided I'd had enough of being a prisoner and made my escape by jumping out of a second storey open window. It was a bit of a drop, but I landed unharmed and ran along a grass lawn and out of the gates of the compound where I was held captive. There were police on the other side of the fence and I told them I'd just escaped, but for some reason, they did not believe me at first.

What's interesting about these dreams is that I had them both very recently and they seem to be centred around the same theme of escape. I wonder what they could be alluding to?

Escape

2010-12-16T12:42:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting one.

It started with me in what looked like some kind of classy function room. There were several people there who were also guests and what appeared to be a party, however there was something not right about the whole siutation.

For one thing, I somehow knew that it wasn't a real party and that all the guests were in fact all there against their will, and that included me. Everyone there was drinking what looked like champagne, but from what I could gather, the drink was spiked. I took a few sips of my own drink before I realised this and decided not to drink any more. I stumbled around and asked other people if they were OK, but nobody else seemed to notice anything wrong. There was also one woman whom I passed that regarded me with a smirk, so I asked her if she thought all of this was funny, to which she simply replied "Yes". I suspect she was in collusion with the captors.

Anyway, by this point, I'd decided that I'd had enough, so I headed for the exit, which was left wide open. However, because of the spiked drink, my limbs felt heavy and I couldn't walk properly, but I persisted nonetheless. I stumbled out of the door and found myself looking at a descending staircase, which I followed all the way down. As I did, I heard voices behind me and knew I was being chased by my captors.

When I reached the bottom of the staircase, I was in a large room that looked like the ground floor of a disused warehouse. I was also mindful of the fact that I needed to hide somewhere fast because my pursuers were very close. I saw several stacks of plastic chairs by a wall and decided to hide behind those. Just then, two large, overweight men lumbered into the room. They were the ones who'd been sent to capture me.

They scanned the room looking for me, and one of them spotted me behind the chairs. As they approached, I held a chair aloft and threatened to hit the nearest man with it if he didn't back up. He started telling me to calm down, but I wouldn't listen and kept swinging the chair in his face so he had no choice but to back off a little. I then threw the chair through the nearest window and heard him scream out "NOOOO!".

I then dived out of the window and found myself in a courtyard. Not knowing quite where I was, but aware of the fact that I desperately had to escape, I started to run. The two fat men had crawled out of the window by this point and gave chase. Somehow, one of them was able to catch up with me; he grabbed my arms and told me I had to go back. I shook myself free and told him I wasn't going to, but he then told me that I couldn't leave anyway. So, they left me to wander to courtyard, knowing I couldn't go anywhere else.

Sometime later, I spotted a little Jack Russell dog that belonged to one of the men, and a voice told me that the dog was very valuable to one of those two men, and if I killed it, he would be too grief-stricken to restrain me and I'd be able to escape. Knowing this, I stamped on the dog's head as it approached me, and to finish it off, I picked it up by its hind legs and smashed its head against a pillar. I then left the carcass where it was and went to find the dog's owner.

Once I found the man, I told him that someone had killed his dog and, as I'd been "told", he was distraught but, for some reason didn't suspect me. Instead, he told me I had to find the dog's killer whom I told him had escaped into one of the buildings that joined onto the courtyard (this was a ruse on my part so I could get out). He seemed to believe me and said I was free to go and find the culprit, so I found myself climbing into the window of what looked like a kitchen. The people in the kitchen were reluctant to let me in at first because they just thought I was trying to escape the courtyard, but I told them I'd been granted permission in search of a dog killer and they were satisfied with my story and let me in.

The dream ended here as I realised that escape was merely inches from my grasp.

Vampires!

2010-06-14T03:06:00.000-07:00

Saturday 12th June 2010

The details of this one are a little fuzzy in places, but basically, I was being hunted by vampires.

The first part I remember was standing next to a middle aged, fat balding guy with a striped t-shirt. He was looking at me strangely and I sensed he wanted something from me. Suddenly he opened his mouth and hissed, revealing a bloody mouth full of pointy teeth. He was a vampire and intended for me to be his next victim. However, something distracted him that very instant and he turned his head to look at something else. I took that diversion as a cue to get out of there as quickly as I could, so I ran off.

I then remember being pursued by another vampire, this time a younger black guy who also had no hair. He was also a Muslim and quoted the Koran at me as he gave chase (even though I've never read the Koran, I somehow knew he was a Muslim and was quoting verses from it). By this point, we were both flying, but I somehow eluded him as well.

The third assailant was also the most difficult, a white woman in her late 30s who was wearing a bright red cardigan. Se chased after me whilst I was airborne and it was nearly impossible to shake her. I eventually did so by flying so high in the air that I found myself in outer space. This gave me the advantage because I learned that vampires are not effective in space, thus she was unable to catch me. I then devised a strategy of tricking her into flying into the sun, but I don't think I pulled it off. Either way, she'd stopped chasing me and I was free of the vampires.

That's about all I remember.

Attack of the midget people

2010-04-17T04:28:00.000-07:00

This dream has two parts. In the first I was in some kind of building several floors up, when thousands of midget people dressed in black started swarming into the scene attacking people. They sang some creepy little song as they did so too.

Anyway, as soon as they appeared, someone shouted "It's the midget people! Run!" so everybody started running. Apparently the best thing to do in this situation was to head for the ground floor as for some reason, the midgets did not go there, so off I ran. I was also with my girlfriend (even though I don't recall seeing her at any point), and we ran down a spiral staircase which had a gap in the middle. I then told her I was going to jump the gap and she would catch her on the other side. I jumped and she followed but amidst the chaos, I lost her. I then heard her call out to me, but I could not find her. I was then confronted by a large man in a chef's outfit who was apparently in collusion with the midgets. Upon seeing me, he grabbed me and started to fly me back upstairs. I then woke up.

When I went back to sleep, the dream continued, but I was in a room with 3 other large chef-type people who were also friends of the midgets. Something told me that the only way to be free of them was to cut off their heads, so using the large sword I now had in my hand, I cut the heads off the 4 men and then woke up again.

This dream was very surreal. And interestingly, at the part where I heard my girlfriend calling me, she was actually calling to me trying to wake me up because I was fidgety and frenzied in my sleep. Hmm...

Maybe I do play too many video games...

2010-04-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

This dream, as suggested by the title was very much like a video game. In fact, to be more specific, it was somewhere between Resident Evil 4 and a first person shooter. Some of the details are a little murky, but what I present is the basic gist of the dream. Interestingly, throughout the dream, I was conscious of the fact that it was a game even though I was actually participating.

I was an agent or soldier of some description, and the dream began with me being given the choice of either going to help the president who was on board a plane and in danger or of saving a little girl (between 5-7 years) who'd been taken hostage. The girl's kidnappers wanted some kind of ransom and threatened to slit her throat at the hint of ANY non-compliance. Either way, I chose to help the poor child and set off to her rescue.

I was running through what looked like some kind of construction site and eventually came to a school building. I fought my way in and found myself in a prime spot from which I could see the girl; she was locked in a room with a guy who had his arm around her neck. He was also brandishing a knife. I aimed my sniper rifle and fired. Headshot. However, in doing this, I had now alerted the attention of his cronies who both came after me as well as heading for the room where the girl was held captive.

At this point, I realised that from my position, I could not reach the room without going back downstairs and making a journey on foot to the parallel building, so I ran back down the stairs and made my way across as quickly as I could. As I was doing this, the kidnappers were shooting at me, but, like myself in order to get to the girl, they had to journey across to the other building, which they did by gathering into a large armoured vehicle and driving off. I lobbed a grenade which rolled under the truck, but they drove off before it detonated, so I chased on foot, firing as I ran. After a while, the truck was moving too fast, so I gave up the chase and decided upon trying to head it off in the other direction, reasoning that I'd not be able to get to the girl on time. Consequently, I ran back the way I came and turned down another street which also lead to the same building where the child was held.

My recollection is a little murky here, but I somehow managed to stop the advancing kidnappers and made my way into the building. However, when I got to the classroom and opened the door, the girl was now bound with her hands behind her back, up against a wall. The "game" then transitioned into what seemed like a lightgun shooter. I remained stationery and shot hordes of lumbering zombies as they crept up on the girl. I downed about 8 or 9 zombies and was graced with a cut scene where a zombie approached the child and its flesh started to wrap itself, tendril-like around her body. I then had a few decisive seconds to aim and shoot this last zombie before it consumed her, which I was able to do. I approached the girl, untied her and grabbed her hand, saying that we had to leave, but it was not over yet.

Suddenly, from out of the wall furthest away, a large creature smashed its way into the room and started to give chase. As it did, it picked up the felled zombies and threw their corpses at us. The "game" then went into QTE mode. (For the non gamers, QTE means Quick Time Event and refers to sections of a game where the player has to quickly react to on-screen events by pushing buttons when prompted to progress the game). I ran with this girl and QTE prompts appeared to dodge the corpses and jump over obstacles in our path. At one point, the creature almost gained on us and I had to do a QTE manoeuvre to knock steel poles stacked against a wall into its path to slow it down. The dream ended with the child and I running to safety, cut short by my alarm clock waking me up.

Explosions in the sky

2010-03-28T14:48:00.001-07:00

This is a dream I had this morning. It has a strangely apocalyptic theme.

I had left my girlfriend's house. It was quite early in the morning, around 6am. The sky was clear and the sun was soon to come up. I walked up a road and saw people spilling out of a nightclub. I thought to myself "Wow, they must've been in there a long time!". Then, I looked to the sky and saw the moon there. It was quite large, had a yellowish hue and was emblazoned with a mandala-like pattern on its surface.

All of a sudden, the moon flashed and disappeared as the sun rose and then the sky was filled with lots of large explosions that were actually rather frightening to behold. I remember thinking "This must be Armageddon" and then thought about my girlfriend whose house I'd just left; I wanted to get back to make sure she was OK, particularly if the world was about to end (or so I thought).

I eventually made my way back to her house, but can't remember much more after that.

Lycanthorpe

2010-02-28T14:46:00.001-08:00

In this dream, I was walking down a street at night and noticed two men ahead of me in the distance. One of them, upon spotting me started to run which made me indignant. Consequently, I decided to chase after this person and was running after him for what seemed like a minute or so. During this time, I turned into a werewolf. I eventually cornered him in a front garden of a house and shouted to him "Are you the dreamer, or are you part of someone else's dream?". He didn't respond.

The man then turned into a small dog whose head was trapped between the bars of a gate in the garden. He was now unable to move or run from me, so I ran over and picked up the dog. My first instinct was to tear it to shreds with my teeth, but I actually felt sorry for the poor animal (which I knew was the man who just run from me), so I said "I wasn't going to chase you until you started running and that's what pissed me off. This should teach you not to judge people by appearance!". After lecturing the dog/man, I set him free.

Out of body experience?

2010-02-08T08:47:00.000-08:00

What I'm about to relate most definitely was not a dream, but at the same time, wasn't an OBE in the classic sense, but somewhere in between.

Anyway, I've been sick for the last 5 days and have missed work as a result. It was about 2pm in the afternoon and I was sleeping. My laptop, which sits next to my bed was switched on, playing music from a streaming radio station. As I lay in my bed, I slowly entered a state similar to how hypnosis is often described; I was very relaxed and self-aware but not fully awake. In this state, I felt very relaxed and happy. I then had a brief dream where I got out of bed and went to prepare myself a snack in the kitchen. However, I realised all my electrical appliances had gone, so no kettle, toaster or microwave in the kitchen and no TV or consoles in the living room. At that point I woke up, and realised I had been dreaming. Only that was also a dream. As before, I got up and went into the living room again and, knowing I was still "dreaming" decided to go outside instead, so instead of going into the kitchen, I walked out of my front door.

Outside my flat are steps that lead out into the street. It was a beautiful, sunny day outside (it is actually bleak and miserable today in "reality"). There is a tree by my front window, but this time, it was a little to far to the let, which I thought odd. In spite of this, I continued past the tree and skipped over a small wall (not there IRL) and made my way onto the street. I live on the top of an incline, so the road goes downwards towards town. I ran down this road, which looked familiar at first, but as I continued it started to change. The familiar urban street setting changed into a large, sprawling park. Where there would normally be houses were acres of green in both directions. There were people scattered around here and there, including (bizarrely), one girl attending a small row of graves dug out of the side of a road to my left. I waved at the long-faced girl as I walked past. She listlessly waved back. I also saw some children in a park with their parents some distance away.

By this point, the fact that my surroundings weren't consistent with "real life" was no longer a concern, I was wandering around in a very unfamiliar new world on a bright, sunny day and felt very happy. I saw another hill in front of me which I climbed. There were a small group of people at the top of the hill of whom I asked about my surroundings. I told them I was lost and asked if they could tell me where I was. However, they looked at me strangely and started to back away as if they thought I was crazy. I could not understand why they were so unfriendly. And shortly after this, I woke up properly.

Interestingly, whilst this was happening, I was aware that my physical body was lying in bed, I could even hear myself snoring, and could hear the music from my computer perfectly, but I also knew that my consciousness was elsewhere.

What could this be?

Held at gunpoint at a party

2009-07-29T13:43:00.000-07:00

This dream started off at some kind of party that was taking place in a small building with two floors. The building itself was like a church or scout meeting hall. The interior was completely white and there were three exits; a front and back door and another which lead out into an outer courtyard area with tables. The party spilled out into this courtyard area as well, and people were milling around there and the rest of te building.

I was wandering amongst the dense crowds of people, but I was not looking for anyone in particular. I was also not really enjoying the party all that much. At some point, I walked out into the courtyard in the hopes that something would spark my enthusiasm for the party, only to notice that it was overcast outside and that it started raining. This was the last straw for me, and I thought 'That's it, I'm not enjoying this party, I want to go home' and I went back inside to go to leave.

As I did, my surroundings completely changed. I was now back upstairs in this building only this time, all the party goers had literally vanished and I was all alone. I walked downstairs anxious to know what had just happened but could not find anybody. I started to panic and sensed that not only was something very amiss, but something bad was about to happen. I made my way to the front door (which was blue) and turned the handle, only to find it had been locked from the outside. I looked across the way from where I was stood and could see the back door along a corridor. I then noticed that door opened and a lanky man stepped in. As soon as he saw me, he put his hands to his face in a mock, affected panic and just stood there, staring at me. At this instance I thought 'I should've gone for that door instead'. Just then, I turned around and noticed three other men standing there, one of whom was pointing a gun at me. (The one with the gun was actually somebody I know in real life, too!)

Anyway, the gunman stood there and said nothing. I then realised I had an umbrella in my hand and went to hit him with it (in the hopes that I could disarm him), but found I couldn't move. I was not scared of being shot, but at the same time, I didn't want to be. At this point, I started shouting at the gunman, saying "If you're going to shoot, then shoot! Come on then, you c**t! Do it!".

Then I woke up.

The night before I had this dream I'd had an argument with my girlfriend. We've not been together long (a few months) but unfortunately, she's had to leave town for 2 months to go home to her family (she's a student). While we both feel very strongly about each other, the separation has been difficult for both of us. We speak every day and night on the phone or via email or MSN and I try to busy myself with work and other things during the day to pass the time. She, unfortunately is stuck at home with no money and little to do. In such an environment, her mind plays all kinds of tricks and her insecurities cause her to doubt my loyalty and create issues that don't really exist. A few days ago, she text me in the middle of the night saying she was scared about how close we were getting and was thinking of bailing out. When I called her, she admitted that she did not mean this and only said it to get a reaction out of me because she was scared I might do the same thing to her. Again, this is an imaginary fear caused only by the temporary distance. Either way, we ended up arguing, with me shouting at her, accusing her of being immature and playing mind games and her crying and apologising, saying she really didn't want to split up. We sorted it out, but all of the next day, I was left thinking that, despite not wanting to, that maybe us splitting (even it was temporary) perhaps would not be such a bad thing, for my peace of mind if nothing else (don't get me wrong, I genuinely care about her a lot, but I feel as though she is toying with my emotions with her insecure behaviour and it's causing me real strain). Two weeks previous, she also said a similar thing to me on the phone about having cold feet and I told her that maybe we should split while she decides what she wants, but she got upset and said she did not want to do that.

I mention all of this because it has been on my mind a lot the last few days; since we've been apart not a week has passed without some stupid drama, and I know it's only because of the forced separation because, prior to it all, everything between us was absolutely fine, and drama notwithstanding, I couldn't ask for a sweeter, more caring, sincere and of course more beautiful girlfriend. Either way, I feel this issue is related to this dream, but I'm just not entirely sure how it all fits together. As the dream alludes, I feel at times like she is trying to emotionally hold me at gunpoint and sometimes, just sometimes, it feels as though I am trying to call her bluff, daring her to pull the trigger.

The mystical village community

2009-06-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

Now I can only remember parts of this dream, but for some reason it stuck out in my mind, so I have decided to include it here.

I was in some kind of village community (hence the title) by a large lake. It was quite foggy and remote. The village had a few shops and a small residential area, but most of this dream took place along the main "high street" where the shops were located. Running parallel to this road was a large patch of green by the lake where people would stroll along walking their dogs or jogging.

I recall finding some crystalline rune stones the size of small rocks on the side of the road. They glowed in a manner that was quite arresting (they had a pale, lilac glow) and had intricate runic patterns carved onto them. I remember being quite fascinated by these stones but also a little afraid of them at the same time. However, I also "felt" that I really had nothing to fear from the stones and that my misgivings were mostly irrational; that the crystals some how had answers to many of my questions. Anyway, I picked up the stones and put them in my pocket.

In another part of the dream, I was talking to a young, attractive blonde woman (she must've been about 20 - 22 years old) in the back of a shop. She was telling me about the power of the stones, but I can't remember everything she said. I also recall eating one of them at some point. It was soft and chewy like a sweet. I ate most of one particular stone but left a tiny piece behind for some reason.

In another part of the dream, I was in another shop where more of these stones were on display. These were also quite bright, but didn't have quite the same lustre as the ones I'd found. I asked the woman in the shop about them and she told me they were very expensive. I somehow didn't feel they were as valuable as the ones I had found. I also "knew" that some of the stones this woman had on display were actually fakes, so I left the shop and proceded to look for the place I was at before. However when I returned to where that particular shop was located, I could not find it. It was as though it had disappeared. I walked up and down the same stretch of road, walked into what I thought was the place, only to find myself in a chip shop! I became frustrated and I set about looking for the first girl I'd met, in the hopes she could fill me in on what was going on.

I walked along the green by the lake and eventually found her running past me in the opposite direction (she was going for an afternoon jog). She didn't stop, but told me to meet her back at the first shop, and that in order to find it, I had to be holding one of the stones in my hand.

I went back, and just like she said, it was then that I realised that the shop was only visible to those who were holding the stones. I entered the chip shop whilst holding one of the crystals only for it to turn into the first shop I visited! The girl was there again along with a mysterious old woman (maybe her grandmother) who I think was some kind of mystic. In fact, I believe this entire family was mystic in some way and I had just been accepted as "one of them" (the other villagers had no mystical leanings whatsoever). I remember feeeling comfortable with this people, and finally understanding that the stones were nothing to be feared. In the dream, I felt all this was new to me, but at the same time, somehow familiar. I felt both the girl and her grandmother were trying to reassure me that I was safe, and that I "belonged" with them.

I woke up from this dream feeling tranquil and calm.

Catching a child molester

2009-06-08T00:28:00.000-07:00

This is probably one of the strangest dreams I've had in recent memory, if not ever.

It started with me as an observer viewing a scene in a park. There was a little girl on a swing with a much older man who was her father. The girl was not wearing any knickers. I won't elaborate on this part of the dream because it's pretty messed up and I would much rather forget it. All I will say, however is that the man was hovering around the child and behaving in a very inappropriate manner.

The dream then changed and I was standing with the same little girl on a street that I actually recognise from my neighbourhood. Her dad, the man with her before on the swing stood a few yards away in the distance across the road. I was speaking to the child, who was between 7 - 10yrs old. Even though this sick fuck had clearly been abusing this girl, she seemed strangely attached to him all the same. I was trying to take this girl to safety (i.e. get her away from him) but she wanted him to come with us. It took some persuasion, but I was eventually able to get her to leave him and come with me.

I told the girl I would take her to the beach (which is odd given that it was night time). We walked through the neighbourhood streets and she told me that if we were going to the beach, she needed suitable attire. She told me she had a skimpy bikini and asked me (quite flirtatiously) if I wanted to see her in it. I told her that I did not and that such behaviour was not appropriate for a child, to which she seemed surprised, almost as though she had become so used to her abuse that she thought it was normal. She was very precocious and that unsettled me. I then produced a more modest leotard and told her she could put it on later. She was almost disappointed.

We got lost on our way to the beach and ended up at an abandoned industrial estate. It was night, but some of the lights were on in the buildings and surrounding area. We walked into a large open plan building and then heard a sound of ringing bells and the girl panicked. I asked her what was wrong and she said that the bell sound was the ringtone on her father's phone, which meant he was nearby and had followed us. By this point, her attitude had changed and she was more afraid of her father, so I told her to hide in one of the nearby rooms whilst I waited behind a nearby table piled high with car parts. If her abusive dad was approaching, I was going to wait for him. I picked up a brick to use as a weapon against him.

Just then, someone came crashing through the door and, thinking it was her father, I stood up with holding the brick only to be confronted by police. I immediately threw up my hands in surrender and said "It's OK, the girl is over there!" pointing to the room she'd run into. One of the police shot at me anyway, but I ducked and dodged the bullet, and he was reprimanded by his colleagues (there were about 5 of them). I then looked behind me and saw the girl's father; he looked a bit like that Fritzl guy who was arrested for locking up his daughter as a sex slave recently and had that same cold, leering expression. The cops chased him and I threw the brick I was holding at this monster, but it missed. The police eventually caught him and hauled him back into the room. They had him on the ground and one of them held a metal hook to his jugular. Unfortunately, he was able to struggle free. Whilst this was happening, the other police had found the girl.

All of a sudden, there were only 4 people int the room; me, the paedo and two cops who circled him pointing their guns but did little else.The man threw a large heavy weight at me, but I managed to catch it. He then picked up a leaden block and started licking and rubbing it, saying he was trying to give himself lead poisoning. He was muttering to himself and I could see he was clearly mad. He grinned and leered maniacally. He threw the lead block at me, but I dodged it and the cops continued to circle him. He then picked up a transparent polygonal object he called a "Luftwaffe" (as in the German plane). He carressed it and then threw it at me. It bounced off my left shoulder. He said this object had pain enhancing properties and would now intensify any pain I received to that part of my body. He also said that by caressing the object, pain was enhanced for him as well but he didn't mind, and that pain only mattered to people who "valued the innocence of children" (he was referring to me). I had a large, unweildy metal object in my hand at this point and tried to strike him with it, but kept on missing. As I did, it struck the ground, sending a painful jarring sensation up my left arm. The cops kept on circling, but made no attempt to apprehend this monster whatsoever. Fat lot of good they were.

Anyway, the man now sat in the centre of the room in front of a table with a large, purple A3 sheet with a picture of 3 little girls which looked as though it had been drawn by children itself. He seemd taken by this picture. The girls in the picture had names above their heads. I remember seeing the names Becky and Candy. I struck the picture with the pole, tearing a hole into it and the man started to shriek in terror. I then realised this was his weakness and told the cops to help me tear up the picture. They rushed over to assist as the man started flapping and screaming hysterically. Then I woke up.

On hindsight, this dream was actually fairly easy to interpret and came about with the help of this post here. As the poster correctly surmised about me, I have always been sensitive to issues of this nature. Whenever I hear about such things, I seem to empathise deeply with the victims. I have always been this way and I do not know why. The symbolism of being struck on the left shoulder, which pertains to the left side/right brain/emotional side also makes perfect sense as does the weight thrown at me which symbolises the way these kind of events seem to burden my soul somewhat. However, I do not think this dream was literally about the Fritzl incident, but rather a suspicious scene I witnessed in the town where I live recently where I saw a guy in his 40s leading a pair of strung out looking young girls around, one of whom he took to the docks and put on a boat. I actually called the police about this too, but they did nothing. Therefore, I believe the dream is about me trying to process this incident and the Fritzl looking guy was a symbolic representation of the man I saw in the real world (incidentally, the man in the dream also resembled him somewhat too). What's even more interesting is that this same man looked like the man in the park from the 'Severed' dream I had a year ago - and this was before I'd even seen him! That dream also had a similar sort of theme. Make of that what you will.

In a faraway land

2009-04-30T00:36:00.000-07:00

Before I even begin recalling this one, all I can say is wow.

Just wow.

The dream started off with me at my mother's house. I was downstairs in the living room and I think we'd just had some kind of argument as she had asked me to leave. Around the same time, my mum's neighbour who, in real life is a gossipy old crow in her late 60s I think (I'm no good with people's ages) suddenly appeared. She was laying on the ground by my feet and she actually looked a lot younger than she is (she looked as though she was in her 30s). She asked "So what are you going to do now?", and to my mother she turned and said "I bet you'd be more happy if your son was around more, wouldn't you?" In real life, this woman is incredibly irritating because she really goes out of her way to mind other people's business and seems to live for their affairs. I responded by ignoring her and holding a newspaper I was reading up to my face. I then got up to leave.

As I was leaving, I heard shuffling and the sound of somebody moaning and knew straight away that there was a zombie outbreak. The next thing I noticed was that my mother and sister (who was also in the room) had now vanished. I knew they hadn't been caught by the zombies, they just weren't there anymore.

As soon a heard the zombies, I ran for the back door and into the garden. Unlike real life, the garden was not fenced in and was completely open, as was the back gate. I heard more moaning and shuffling from the gate and realised there were more zombies around than I thought. I ran into the middle of the garden and thought to myself "I wonder if I can fly in this dream?" so I tried. It took a few attempts, but I eventually soared into the air away from all the zombies. I was so high into the air I could see everything down below for miles and noticed there were areas of this world where the ground suddenly stopped and gave way to nothingness, as though you could just drop off those areas and fall off the edge of the world like in a video game. Those voids were the same colour as the sky.

Anyway, I kept on moving upwards and found myself flying across this world. I recognised some of the areas from previous dreams including this one. I flew past a motorway and what looked like a city busy with traffic and eventually landed somewhere a long way from where I started. My first thought was whether there would be any more zombies, but something told me there would not be, and that the outbreak was confined to the place I'd just come from. This new place looked a bit like Japan (the people there were also Japanese), but the signs (which I could actually read) were written in Engrish and some kind of weird dream language. I read a sign on a door that said 'Daivo' (which is not a Japanese word at all as the 'V' sound does not exist in that language) and a roadsign that had numbers and words mixed together. I flew over to what looked like two carousel horses sticking out of a raised platform. They looked a bit like the small amusement rides for children you get inside large supermarkets. On one of the horses was a black guy who resembled Kanye West. He was wearing a black suit and stood out because he was the only non-Asian I could see and I just felt I had to talk to him. His eyes shone, but they didn't have the same lustre as the "person" from this dream.

I went over and said "Hey Kanye, what are you doing in my dream?" (despite somehow knowing that he wasn't actually Kanye West, but a being who had assumed his form for some reason). He responded with something like "Never mind about that". I then said "Why am I here?" and he said "You are here because you are changing and you know it". That struck a chord with me instantly. I knew what he meant (more later). I then asked him "What is this place? Where am I?". He didn't answer that question. Instead, he leaned over and put a coin in a little coin box next to the carousel horse as if he was trying to activate the ride. And that was where our interaction ended. He said nothing more and I felt as though he was communicating that I already knew the answer to the question I'd asked.

I flew away from him and back down into the main town square and then thought I'd woken up. I was lying on a bed I didn't recognise and waved my arms in front of my face and said something like "I am part of all the planets of the cosmos... they are all a part of me and we are one". There was another person in this room, a woman who I used to work with. I then realised that I hadn't woken up at all and found myself back in the Japanese town. I entered a supermarket that also sold electrical goods (there were some nice large, HDTVs) and just browsed this dream world. I exited the shop via a glass door by which stood a Japanese security guard (who opened the door for me) and strolled around the square. I came across a shrine tucked away in a little corner. It had large clay figurines of what looked like zombie creatures. The most distinct was a terracotta figurine that had a twisted face with disembodied hands all over it. Something told me that I was not to hang around this place for very long, so I moved on. In the corner opposite that one was a stall that sold souvenirs and sweets. I was actually aware of the fact that I was dreaming and that souvenirs would be no use to me, but the woman at the stall (who was also non-Asian, a white woman in her late 30s) told me that she sold special sweets that once eaten, would enable the dreamer to remember everything they dreamt. I liked the sound of this so I bought one. She put out her hand for the coinage and even though I had no money, I went through the motion as though I was dropping something in her hand and when I did, a coin just appeared. She wrapped the sweet in a paper bag. It was large enough to hold with both hands and was purple. I was eager to eat the sweet, so I started chomping on it before I'd even taken it out of the paper bag, and I then woke up.

It seems as though the sweet worked, because I remembered everything.

Thoughts: First of all, if you're reading this I apologise for the length but I have a lot to write down. This dream is very significant for me because it has come at a time in my life when I have changed more than I ever would have thought. I was raised in a catholic and later christian environment, but I became disillusioned with the religion some years ago and ceased following it. I have not told this to my mother (I know she would never udnerstand), but at the same time, I have also been made aware of spiritual realities that are far greater than the limitations of religion. To that end, I have been receptive when my mum gives me verses or books to read, even if I don't always agree with everything she says or gives me to read.

I have come to realise that God is not limited to a particular religion and have started embracing other spiritual ideas which previously, under christianity I had no time for, was wary of, or simply dismissed as "satanic" having been scared into believing that thinking out of the box was a one way ticket to eternal damnation (in other words, it was always safer to tow the line even when it didn't make sense). However, now that my understanding of the being that created the universe is beyond the christian perception, I KNOW this not to be true. Thus, my thinking has completely changed from the way I was indoctrinated (represented in the dream by me falling out with my mother, the tenets of my old beliefs represented by the zombies I was so eager to escape). I have also started embracing things like meditation, psychic realities and out of body experiences because, contrary to what christianity teaches, I now know these things are part of us and we part of God; therefore there is nothing about these things that is "wrong" or "evil". They're certainly not "satanic" because I've come to realise that satan as we udnerstand him doesn't exist. We create our own devils by our selfish actions that hurt others. I've also come to see that a lot of the christian admonitions against such practices were based on deliberate misinformation and in some cases, sheer hypocrisy. Japan in the dream represented a place/culture that was "foreign" and very differnet from the one I knew which is a metaphor for the way in which my beliefs have been transformed. What's more, these new experiences leave me feeling peaceful and I feel much more in touch and in tune with the creator (who is not the same angry man-god of christianity) in a way I never have been before. I definte myself as a spiritual free thinker. I appreciate that all religions serve a purpose and may be necessary for some souls to advance, but neither one is the "right" one because all are essentially man-made and therefore fallible in some way. I feel as though I have woken up and, just as the guide in this dream told me, "I have changed".

And yes, I believe he was also a guide, just like the one from the lion dream. And so, this dream was about my ongoing awakening.

A vicious battle

2009-03-27T05:13:00.000-07:00

I only remember parts of this dream, but believe that the parts I have remembered are significant in some way.

From what I can remember, the dream started with me in a desert. I was with 6 other people who were all stood around in a circle. They wanted me to join them, but I wanted to just lie in the sand and look up at the sky instead. It was sunset and even though this was a desert, the horizon was lined with trees. There were also little grassy islands in the distance.

The dream then switched to later that evening, only this time the desert was no more and everything was grassy, almost like a park. In the distance I could now see a large tower. There was another person with me, a large black guy who looked a bit like the rapper Immortal Technique. He was running ahead, urging me to go with him to the tower. I asked why we were going there and he said there was a battle and we needed to be in on it. I ran along with him, but pointed out that we had no weapons. He then told me we didn't need any, and I was left wondering how we were meant to fight unarmed.

We eventually reached the foot of the tower. The entrance had been covered up with some sort of barricade and other people I assumed to be fighters were pushing past the barricade and making their way inside. I noticed they were all armed, but every single one of them dropped down dead as soon as they stepped inside. My companion then told me this was the reason we didn't need any weapons, and that we could pick some up once we'd got inside.

The dream switched again to the battle proper, which took place in what looked like a warehouse. I was now partnered with a woman called Tracy, who ran straight into the fight. It was a vicious battle with lots of gunfire and explosions. At this point, I was an observer rather than a participant, then it suddenly ended. There were few survivors and the woman I was with was missing. I presumed she was dead but female detective who'd suddenly showed up said that she knew this Tracy had gone AWOL. I was stood with the detective on a platform that overlooked a street. I peered over the railing at the edge of the platform and found myself looking down an alleyway lined with tenements. The dream ended here.

Forgiveness?

2009-02-28T02:51:00.000-08:00

In this dream, I started off on some kind of veranda of a house in some snowy town at night. The veranda was pretty high up, allowing me a panoramic view of the whole town. It looked like something on the front of a Christmas card.

I then started to fly off, only at this point I was not in control of my movements. It felt more as though I was being guided along. I flew slowly, looking down at the ground below me and landed next to a bare tree in the middle of nowhere. The scene was bleak and dark looking and the sky overcast. Everything was rendered like that of an old painting. There were five children sat around under the tree, one of which was sat in the lap of a girl who looked to be about 17 and was the oldest one there. They were all dressed in 15th century European attire and the oldest girl wore a deep burgandy red dress, which was the only item of colour to be seen. I spoke to the teenager and asked if I could join her group. She then leaned over and spoke in the ear of the child on her lap and said something like "Has he come to be forgiven of his sins?"

That's about all I remember. This dream stuck with me because it felt really odd. There was a strange stillness in the air and everything was rendered like that of an old painting.

Out of body experience

2009-02-14T02:39:00.001-08:00

Not a dream per se but related and therefore worth posting here.

This morning, I had what I can only describe as an out of body experience. It was about 3am and I was lying in my bed facing the ceiling. When I was younger, I didn't like facing this way when going to sleep it seemed to induce nightmares, but this doesn't happen now.

Anyway, I was lying awake with my eyes closed, totally relaxed, my mind empty of any real thoughts. I then felt as though I literally floated away from my own body. It then felt as though I was swimming around my room in slow motion. I could not really make much out because it was so dark, but I knew I was out of my body. My laptop is near my bed and even though I switch it off at night, the battery and standby lights are still visible and result in a pale light, which I could see perfectly from where I was (the rightmost corner of my room, facing my bed).

I then felt myself floating upwards through the ceiling (which would take me into the kitchen of the person who lives above me), but instead of floating into my neighbour's kitchen, I found myself in a dark, vertical tunnel and I was slowly "swimming" up it. I don't know where it lead, but I was conscious of myself the whole time. There were also boundaries that appeared as soon as I floated too far in a particular direction.

Strangely, even though I knew I was floating outside of my body, I felt totally calm. At the same time, I was also aware of my physical body even though I could no longer feel it. I could hear myself snoring and even felt myself open my eyelids. The only way I can describe this sensation is to say that I was aware of my physical body even though I was not in it. Eventually, because I was aware of the fact that I was outside of my body, I became a little worried about not being able to return, so I found myself looking back down the dark vertical tunnel and felt as though I was tugging some kind of cord that lead back to my body. I then woke up properly, feeling very calm and relaxed.

What is interesting about this experience is that I am of the opinion that we do "travel" in our sleep, so this out-of-body experience felt almost as though I was consciously aware of the fact that I was travelling. I've also had many flying dreams in the past where the flying felt a lot like the floating and "swimming" I was doing out of my body. Now I think I understand why.

I also had a very similar out of body experience when I was about 12, but I was not aware of what was happening at the time and dismissed it as a weird dream. In that particular experience, I felt myself "swimming" around my bedroom at slow motion, but it felt very uncomfortable and disorientating, likely due to the fact that I didn't understand what was going on.

I cannot tell you how long this experience lasted, but it has left me with absolutely no doubt that we travel away from our bodies in our sleep.

A god of hooves, a god of horns...

2009-01-30T10:41:00.000-08:00

I was attending a party which was taking place in a school classroom. It was very crowded and I had two girls coming on to me. One was an (east) Indian girl about my height and a brunette who was taller than me. The brunette kept putting her tongue in my ear. It tickled as it does with a cotton bud, and for some reason, I really liked it.

An old man then showed up with a pile of dead animal bones which he placed on a table. He then asked me to bring him the hooves of the animal from under the table where I was sat. I was a little irritated that he asked me, but complied by breaking the hooves from the rest of the remains that were there. I brought him the hooves and he started doing a pagan ritual in the middle of this party. I started to feel a little creeped out by it all and decided to leave; so I went to everyone I knew at the party and told them I was going (including the Indian girl). Then another girl, a tall blonde persuaded me to stay and promised to buy me a drink if I waited for her as she took care of something. So I waited next door, which was another classroom and by this point, the pagan ritual has stopped and the party resumed as the DJ got back behind the decks. The other room was a lot quieter and I was one of about six people. The girl gave me a small CD wallet and told me to hold onto and that she wouldn't be long.

The girl was gone for a long time, I was getting impatient and wished that I'd just left earlier instead of allowing myself to be talked into sticking around. I put her CD wallet down on a table and went into the corridor to see if she was there. She wasn't. I returned to the room to find that someone had knocked the wallet off the table. I picked it up and stood around some more. By this point I really wanted to go home, but the dream ended before she returned.

Picking a fight

2009-01-30T10:21:00.000-08:00

I'll compile two dreams into this one entry because they're quite similar. I had them last night.

In the first, I was walking down a passage in the middle of the day and turned the corner only to find myself at the end of a three-strong queue, at the end of which was a large, bare chested man who looked as though he was squaring up to the people in front of him. Not wanting to get involved, I turned and ran back the way I came, only for the bare chested man to start chasing me and the three other men.

I turned out of the passage into a street in decided to hide from the assailant by ducking into someone's back garden. The garden actually sloped downwards to a sheer drop into another similar garden, and at the end of that drop was a motorway. The last thing I remember about this dream was teetering over the edge of this second drop.

In the second dream, I was in another passage. I was looking for a toilet, and stopped to ask a guy who was in the passageway with his girlfriend. He pointed me in the right direction before warning me that people who visited that toilet often ended up in violent confrontations. Regardless, I found and entered the toilet anyway. As I was pissing in the urinal, I noticed the pink-ish decor and saw the 'Ladies' sign on the door (it was blurry, but I knew it was the ladies all the same). It appeared that I'd gone into the wrong toilet, but I rationalised that any violence was more likely to occur in the men's so it was probably just as well.

As I was finishing off, I saw the shadow of the same guy from earlier walk past the small, frosted glass window and knew straight away that he was the cause of the voilence and that he was coming for me. I decided to go by the entrance and wait as I figured he'd turn back and go the other way having not seen me; which he did. On the way back, he peered through the small ladies' window and somehow saw me even though the toilet itself was quite dark (I don't think the light worked). He then ran back and the door flew open and we started scrapping. Next thing I know, he physically vanished and the scene changed. I then found myself in the middle of a park, standing in the middle of a flowerbed. For some reason, I was determined to find this guy and finish the fight, but the dream ended.

Recurring dream: Staying at a hospital

2009-01-28T08:04:00.000-08:00

I've had a couple of these. In the first , I was a patient at the hospital but I was lost and wandered the corridors and rooms looking for my bed. In this dream (from 28-10-08), I was yet again a patient but this time I wanted to use the toilet. I went to the toilet and stepped into the cubicle only for someone else to suddenly appear and obstruct me as I tried to lock the door. He was then joined by someone else and the two of them started to unscrew the locks from the cubicle doors, so I couldn't use it. I was very annoyed by this as I desperately wanted to go, but I had no choice but to leave and find another free toilet.

I spent most of the dream traversing the many hallways and rooms yet again (it was exactly the same hospital as the other dream and it was H-U-G-E), only this time looking for a toilet, but every time I found one there was some kind of problem. I became so frustrated by this that I was almost brought to tears and couldn't understand how people could be so inconsiderate to me as a patient.

I eventually made my way to the ground floor and wandered into an open plan office area where the workers were laughing and joking with one another. I asked a woman at a desk where the nearest toilet was because I was desperate and had been prevented from going and she got really defensive and thought I was personally blaming HER for my predicament, which upset me even more ("All I want to do is go to the toilet", I thought "Why is everyone being so difficult?"). She eventually pointed me in the direction of the toilet on the ground floor which was down a long corridor and I was FINALLY able to go as this toilet was free. I pushed open the door of the toilet and woke up shortly after that.

UPDATE: I actually think I know what this one is about. At the time I first had this dream until now, I've had a sleeping problem brought on by some medication I'm taking. As a result, I'm tired a lot of the time due to lack of sleep from the night before and need time to recharge my batteries but seldom get a chance to due to other engagements in my personal life. It has become a source of immense frustration for me as it seems like I'm not given a chance to rest, which makes me even more tired and irritable. I think the dream refers to this.

Recurring dream: Staying at a hotel

2009-01-27T16:10:00.000-08:00

10-10-07

Before getting to this one, I need to give a bit of background. I have semi frequent recurring dreams about a hotel. In these dreams, I'm a guest and there always seems to be a problem with the 4th floor (whether I'm staying on that floor in the dream is not important - the issue with the floor remains regardless). It's always the same hotel, but the layout varies from dream to dream.

In one dream, I actually had a room on the 4th floor and when I was in the room, I was safe, but the corridor was filled with an overwhelming sense of some kind of sinister presence. Essentially, the floor was haunted. In one dream, the 4th floor was flooded, and in another, the layout of that floor was inverted, so the ceiling was the floor and so on. I was once even held captive in the hotel in one dream and had to try and escape (which I eventually did), by sneaking my way our via the 4th floor. There's a reason for this digression. Bear with me.

In this dream, I was staying at the hotel again. It was a lot smaller this time, but I knew it was the same place. I was with a party of 4, and we had been allocated a room in the basement. It was called Room Zero. One of the people in my party even remarked "Makes a change from all that 4th floor shit".

Anyway we set off to find this Room Zero. There was daylight outside (I could tell from the light pouring in from the windows), yet when we descended the stairs, the light seemed to quickly vanish and before we knew it, it was nearly pitch black. We were in narrow hallways with dark pink walls and many doors along them. Whilst down here, I got a funny feeling that something wasn't right and somehow knew that the answer to the 4th floor mystery was also here - along with something very evil (I got that same feeling as I did from the corridor in the room with that haunted 4th floor). In spite of this sense of evil though, I wasn't scared. We continued to walk down the hallways and I it became apparent that it didn't seem to end and even appeared to be extending in length. Also, my friends all vanished one by one until l I was alone. Once I was by myself, I saw along the left wall what looked like an open patio-style door. I approached it and witnessed a pale, eeirie orange light emanating from the room (which was open and in full view). In the room was a long table and at the end nearest me sat a ghostly apparition of what looked like a nun. As soon as she saw me, she screamed "Bah!" and dashed round the table in the blink of an eye (similar to how Superman runs). I then woke up feeling very unsettled.

UPDATE: I have had other 4th floor hotel dreams since this one, which is interesting as I incorrectly believed the above dream to be the last I'd ever have. In the first dream, the hotel had taken on a similar form to the last dream in that it was small. I went to my room on the 4th floor via some stairs and passed a couple arguing as discreetly as they could. When I eventually reached my room, I suddenly realised that I had been staying at the hotel at least a week prior to that point and that I had, in fact booked myself in for a slightly longer stay, and had returned to the very same room I had before. The room was plain white with a white wooden floorboard. The bed had just been made and the whole room was empty save the night stand next to the bed. In front of me was a large semicircular window, out of which I could see a large tree whose leaves were shimmering in the wind. I started at this sight with a sense of slight foreboding. There were also quiet strings in the background, similar to what you might hear in a horror film before a victim is attacked. This dream was different from the others in that the problem was no longer on the 4th floor itself, but had now become localised to one particular room on that floor, and I was staying in that room. Oh, and the tree was black. The whole tree.

In another, more lighthearted dream, I was in the same hotel looking for a party on the 4th floor. I went to the room in quesition and the door was opened by an aimiable but somewhat overweight, "nerdy" looking man who invited me in to the party. He also told me there was a ghost in the room.

It's interesting that I keep dreaming about this hotel, and that there's always some kind of problem related to the 4th floor. Perhaps there's something within myself that I need to resolve? Is this what leads me back to this hotel?

Old dream: Lost little girl

2009-01-27T16:02:00.000-08:00

Anyway, as the title suggests, the dream I'm about to relay is one I will never forget because of the effect it had on me. It basically haunted me the day after, and much of that week. This was about 3 years ago, but such was the dream's effect, that I still wonder about it to this day.

As I recall, it began with me standing in a dense forest. Shafts of light were shining in from the trees and the ground was covered with a thick moss. The next thing I remember hearing was a child crying, and I turned to see a little blonde girl of about 7 or 8 years old sitting on the ground. She was wearing a magenta coloured dress that looked a bit grubby. She was also barefoot and had a large bloody graze on one leg. She was facing away from me, so all I could see was her hair. I approached and asked if she was OK and where her parents were. She then told me that her parents had gone missing and she was all alone.

Now, for some reason I felt strongly attached to this poor child. It's really hard to describe, but I almost felt responsible for her, and was genuinely moved by her sadness. In that dream, I was determined to do anything to help this young girl, almost as though she was part of me. I also felt as though in our current predicament, we needed each other; I offered to carry her to safety so we could escape the forest together because I, like her was also lost. I then picked her up and carried because she was injured and couldn't walk properly. I carried her a little way in my arms and then woke up.

Like I said earlier, this dream stayed with me after I'd woken up. For some reason, I could not get the girl's crying out of my head, it literally tugged at my heartstrings whenever I recalled it. Neither could I forget the overwhelming sense of love and compassion I had towards this strange girl to whom I was in no way related, but to whom I still felt conneected. Also, dreams being what they are, I can offer no explanation as to where she came from in the first place or how she came to be sat on the ground behind me, but there you go.

UPDATE: This may be a very old dream, but I have never forgotten it, and with hindsight, I believe I have discovered its meaning. When I had this dream, I was nearing the end of a stillborn relationship. In truth, it's a relationship I never should have pursued as I was emotionally fragile at the time anyway. I believe the crying little girl was a metaphor for my fragile emotional state at the time; I was still hurting and not really in any position for a relationship, and the dream used the girl's genuinely heartrending distress to show me the state I was really in. By picking up the child and carrying her, it was trying to show me that I should reconcile with myself.

Old dream: Lionheart

2009-01-27T15:50:00.000-08:00

This dream started in the living room of a house. The decor was very dark (lots of black and grey). I was at what looked like a house party, and appeared to be the oldest one there (everyone else was around 17-18). I was chatting to a nice girl to my right and turned my back to briefly address someone else, but by the time I'd turned back to the girl, she was already talking to somebody else! Suddenly, most of the people in the room vanished, leaving me with a couple of miscellaneous stragglers. I was annoyed and frustrated that my chance with the girl had been spoiled and now wanted something else to do, so I wandered out of the room and into the hallway.

Heading left down the hall lead to the kitchen and to the right, the front door which was opposite a set of stairs. I heard excited voices upstairs and started to make my way up, only to be met by a pot bellied man in his late forties. He was grey and balding, had an unhealthy complexion and wore a dingy string vest. He never spoke, but I knew he was the "man of the house" and father of whoever it was that had thrown this party. Obviously, he didn't want me going upstaris so he blocked my path, so I turned and went the other way, only for him to slowly saunter after me brandishing a magnum pistol.

The next thing I know, the house disappeared and I was in a grassy woodland area, and the same guy was joined by about 4 others just like him all of whom were also armed. They were all hiding behind trees and rocks and started shooting at me, so I got on my belly and crawled the other way to avoid getting hit. I then suddenly turned into a lion and ran up a hill that was in front of me. On the other side of the hill was a swimming pool with lots of random people of mixed ages standing around - another party. However, because I was a lion, people were scared when they saw me and started running away. I also felt compelled to devour people, but I was still mindful of my previous humanity and held back those instincts.

I was running around in lion form for what seemed like ages when I noticed someone by the pool standing with a small group who just stood out. Ethnically, he was what you might describe as a light skinned black man, he wore a grey hooded cloak and had what I can only describe as incredibly intense brown eyes that were bright in a manner that was truly unearthly. As soon as I saw him, I instantly KNEW I'd encountered him before in other dreams that I'd forgotten about. He looked straight at me and said something like "You know why I've come - to tell you the other is here!". Now, not only did I recognise him from other dreams, I also had a feeling that despite the weird vibe he gave off, he was actually here to help me. I also felt that he wasn't really human (it's difficult to explain how , but I did). In lion form, I approached him, stood up on my hind legs, and placed my paws on his chest.

I then said "I'm not scared of you", to which he replied with "I think you are" and we started to out-stare each other. As before, his eyes were very intense and he gave off an aura that suggested he (or it) was incredibly powerful and not someone you'd want as an enemy.

I then said "I'm not, because I know who you are!". He then shot me a look somewhere between incredulity and amusement - a look which said "Who do you think you're talking to!?". I started to answer his question with "You are..." then I woke up.

This dream unnerved me because of that mysterious man. Like I said, I KNOW he's been in other dreams I've had, even though I've forgotten, and it was the eyes and the weird vibe that triggered the recollection. As I slowly returned to full consciousness awareness, I was left wondering who, or what he was...

UPDATE: I've been reading a lot on dream symbolism, reincarnation (of which I am a believer), near death experiences and other paranormal phenomena of late. Something I came across in my readings was the concept of Oversouls, beings placed in our lives as guardian spirits that oversee our development. After some consideration, I am convinced with absolute certainty that this being was an Oversoul of mine. As stated above, I felt as though he knew me very well and was trying to help me. I also knew that I couldn't mess with him.

The day before I had this dream, I was actually feeling very very low for reasons I do not intend to write here. I was so low in fact that I actually contemplated taking my own life (something that had been on my mind a for a few days). That evening, I was invited out by a friend for her birthday. We were accompanied by some people I didn't get on with and one of those people spitefully put a spanner in the works when she saw me chatting up another girl with whom I was getting on well. She leaned over and whispered something in her ear and the girl never spoke to me again for the rest of the night. After the way I was already feeling, this was like the final nail in the coffin. I think that explains the incident at the house party. I was of course pretty mad about this, but I bit my tongue even though I wanted to tear this individual a new one and tell her what I really thought about her, which may explain the part in the dream with the lion and its desire to devour the party goers (in other words, me controlling my "beastly nature").

I am certain I saw this Oversoul because of how I was feeling I and he was there to encourage me to persevere. The appearance of this being shocked me so much, that my dark thoughts slowly dissipated after that.

Yes, I am a long way from home...

2009-01-19T13:12:00.000-08:00

I was in a large field that had been harvested for crops. I think it was along a motorway. It was daytime and walked across its expanse, passing several little plastic tents with transparent windows that showed the tents were full of crops and fruit that were being grown (I think the tents created certain temperature conditions that helped them grow). The fruit were mainly bananas and the crops vegetables such as cabbages. I also saw trees with coconuts and mangoes (though the trees didn't look like normal coconut trees). In the distance, I could also see silos and sheds. I wasn't sure where I was going, but I knew for certain that I was a long way from home. For some reason, I wanted to climb into one of the tents and fall asleep; it was almost as if I didn't have a home or anywhere to stay. I also kept on telling myself how convenient it would be to camp out here, surrounded by all the fruit and other crops, but I couldn't find a way into the tents as they did not appear to have any openings. So I continued walking.

At some point, I decided to turn and go back the other way because I didn't want to get lost. As I did, I started noticing other people in the field. I think they were farm hands. Anyway, I didn't want them to see me, so I made my way back to where I came from with stealth and caution. I later found myself in a building which was a cross between a portacabin office, shed and a factory. I think this was where I came from. The building had an almost maze-like structure to it. That's all I can remember.

Incidentally, I've been having sleeping problems for the last year or so, but recently it has gotten worse. I actually had this dream the morning I'd called in sick for work because I'd been up the night before and was too tired to go in (physically and mentally exhausted).

Inner city dogs

2009-01-17T09:22:00.000-08:00

Thursday 15th Jan 09

I was walking in a busy park. There was a man behind me with a vicious dog on a leash. He let the dog off the leash and I watched as it ran around jumping on and biting people. I wondered why the man was doing this and was also concerned that the dog might try and attack me, but it never did.

Later, the dog turned into 5 thugs with knives and the park became a street in an inner city slum. The thugs were running around looking for people to stab and cut up. I found myself climbing up the side of a giant mattress that was propped up against a wall. I did this to escape the thugs' detection. When I got to the top of the mattress, I slipped and fell back down, almost breaking my ankle. Then I woke up.

Indoor camping

2009-01-17T05:10:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 14th Jan 09

Another camping related dream. This time, I was staying at a camp site with friends and we were sharing a tent. Again the details are a little hazy, but what basically happened was that we arrived at the site which, bizarrely was indoors in a building with no roof. We arrived and set up our tent and shortly after, it started drizzling. I remember thinking “There’s no way I’m camping in the rain”. After we’d settled in, everyone just mingled and milled around and at some point, I was handed a joint by a middle aged woman I recognise from my work. I smoked the joint she passed me surreptitiously by cupping it in my hand so nobody else would see. However, the smell got out and one of the campsite officials made an announcement that as someone had brought illegal substances onto the site, they would be conducting random searches. I was worried by this as I actually had some of my own in my bag back in the tent! I decided then to just lay low, which I did by walking into an adjacent room which turned out to be a bar (more on that in a bit).

Incidentally, the woman who handed me the joint is someone I know from work and doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who’d be into such things. In real life, I don’t like this woman very much at all, in my experience she’s quite surly and rude and I try to have as little to do with her as possible. Why I dreamt of her I do not know.

Anyway, the bar I walked into was small and L-shaped in structure. It had an area that functioned as a dancefloor and makeshift stage. I went to get a drink and had to pass by a troupe of people in animal costumes doing a performance. I then thought that I should maybe tell my friends about this bar as it was a good way of making ourselves scarce whilst the officials were conducting searches, so I left without ordering a drink in the end and went to find my friends. When I got back to the main camping room, I found that they’d upped and moved the tent to along with all my belongings and I wasn’t able to find them. I don’t remember much after that.

What is interesting is the similarities between this and the boot camp dream; the camp I was staying at in the other dream ALSO had an adjoining bar (I just didn’t mention it as it wasn’t important) which was structured in the same way. The only difference was the makeshift stage and the décor (the bar in this dream had a more modern, wood panel veneer whereas the boot camp bar had a more traditional, rustic pub-like look to it).

Escaping a boot camp...

2009-01-14T14:27:00.000-08:00

Monday 12th Jan. 09

Again, my recollection of this one is choppy but the gist of the dream is this: I had gone away to some kind of camp (in a dormitory building) for the week where I would be around other people doing all kinds of “fun” activities. However, when I got there I discovered the camp was nowhere near as fun as previously advertised and there was little to do. Also, the place was a good train ride away from my home town and a little off the beaten track. In other words, there was no easy way of leaving.

After a short while, a group of military policemen took over the camp. They claimed to bring the fun activities we were originally promised and, at first seemed quite amiable, making all kinds of nice sounding claims about the stuff we’d be doing. However, none of it came to fruition. Instead, they had the camp on lockdown and told us that we were no longer free to leave and had to do as they said. I decided that I wasn’t having this and sneaked out of the camp. Even though it was on lockdown, I somehow managed to nonchalantly walk out of the front door without anyone noticing. I then ran up a little dirt track (which originally lead to the camp) and found myself walking along a long road. The whole time, I was looking behind me, mindful that the military police would soon give chase, but they never did.

My next thought was to find the train station so I could go home, but I was lost and didn’t really know where I was going. After a while, I found two young men and asked them were the police station was. They pointed me in the right direction, then I asked them for the train station (which is what I really wanted to know) and they said they didn’t know. One of the men was also smirking, so I asked him what was so funny and grabbed him by the throat. He then apologised and said it was because he recognised me from the camp; it turns out he visited it at some point when I was still there. Anyway, I accompanied the men for a while and they helped me find my way.

I did eventually get back home, but I’m not sure how. When I got home, I regretted the fact that I’d left all my best clothes at the camp when I escaped as I looked in my wardrobe and found there wasn’t much left. I consoled myself with the thought that it was January so I might be able to pick up something cheap in the sales(!). However, some time later I chose to go back to the camp for my clothes. When I got there, I saw the people I left being shouted at and ordered about by the MPs. Luckily, nobody recognised me when I went there and nobody tried to stop me from leaving a second time either. (I didn’t take my clothes with me in the end… I think I had trouble finding them.)

The dream ended with me on a ship boarded to some unknown destination in Europe. I have no idea where I was going, or why. I also woke up from this dream feeling very uneasy.

Cold shoulder

2009-01-14T14:19:00.000-08:00

12 Jan. 2009

My recollection is a little vague, but the dream involved me working somewhere alongside a girl I know in real life who stopped speaking to me very recently for no reason at all. I have often speculated that her attitude was due to the influence of someone who doesn’t like me very much telling her lies about me.

Anyway, this appears to have spilled over into the dream, in which I was with her in a room somewhere and asked her what her problem was with me, but she turned away, stone faced and refused to answer me. My response was something along the lines of “OK screw you, then!”

In the same dream, I was also doing some kind of menial work which was supposed to last 8 days, but also be very demanding. An unknown old man was telling me about the demands of the job, and that even though it was hard with enough commitment I might be able to made a difference.

Incidentally, the girl in this dream also appeared in a dream I had about 8 or 9 years before I'd even met her. I talk about it here.

A dark road, a dark passage...

2008-09-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

In this dream, I'm walking down a dark road late at night with four other people, two of whom are friends from my waking life. I'm not sure where we'd come from or where we were headed, but as I say it was very dark. So much so, that we could not see more than a few inches in front of us in either direction, almost as though a pale spotlight was on us.

I was in the front of the group, and at regular intervals, I would collapse as if one of my ankles had just given way. When that happened, I sat cross legged on the ground for a moment or so as one of my friends joked and told me to get up and stop slowing everyone else down. The same thing happened to another party member also.

The location suddenly changed without walking and the five of us were walking in a very dark passageway. As before, we could not see very far in front of us. I remember feeling creeped out at this point, as though there was something in this hallway that I didn't want to confront, but being with friends made it that little bit more bearable. Also, there was creepy music coming from somewhere in the dark. The music was a male, choral baritone; the lyrics were also pretty strange, but I've unfortunately forgotten them.

Anyway, as before I was ahead of the group and I looked into the distance and just about saw the figure of a young woman (late teens to early twenties) on crutches disappearing into the blackness of the passage. I then returned to my friends, who I found sitting on the ground behind me. All of a sudden, each of the four friends literally faded and vanished, leaving just me on my own. I then started to feel very scared, not wanting to face what was in this corridor alone, and it was at that point that I woke up, feeling slightly relieved.

To give a little background, the two friends were people I saw recently (i.e. over the weekend) one of whom had just returned having been away for 3 years. I can't think of anything specific that was happening in my life the day before, but I do have a lot on my plate at the moment; I have a hectic social life and work is very busy. I've also recently had new responsibilities at work due to a downsizing in our office and some of that work is a little daunting. I've also not been getting all that much sleep of late so between my busy social engagements, new work and lack of sleep, my mind has been in flux and sometimes, it feels like things are getting on top of me. Could this have something to do with it?

Old dream: Pyramid train

2008-05-24T12:19:00.000-07:00

This one dates back to October 2007.

I'm in a dark tunnel speaking to my mum. My sister is also there. My mum walks off, and my sister and I are left. All of a sudden, a train rolls into the tunnel, and the music starts to go all Silent Hill. I also notice that the front of the train resembles Pyramid Head's head. Just then, I notice the train starts to slowly transform INTO Pyramid Head, so I turn and tell my sister we need to get out of here quick. However, she's faffing around and not listening to me, so I grab her hand and we both run out of the tunnel. At some point, I think she slips or I lose her, but I keep on running anyway. I manage to escape the tunnel before Pyramid Head transforms and then I wake up.

Old dream: Living Dead Woman

2008-05-24T12:15:00.000-07:00

This one dates back to October 2007.

I was a new student starting college. I went to my class, and noticed that the tutor was no taller than 4 feet (though she wasn't a midget, as everything was in proportion). She briefed the class (it goes a bit blurry here) and later everyone's dismissed for break. I return from break to find the class empty save the tutor, whose sitting with her feet up on her desk casually surfing the net on her laptop. I ask her what's going on, to which she shrugs indifferently. She tells me she couldn't care less about teaching the class anymore. I criticise her for being unprofessional, and she criticises me for being nosey. I continue to pry as to her sudden change of attitude, and she bursts into tears and tells me she doesn't want everyone to know that she is in fact dead. She describes herself as a "living dead woman" and tells me she frequently has to go for check-ups because her body parts keep rotting and falling off. All of a sudden, the smell of putrefaction fills the room and I hear people vomiting. I also start to vomit, and the dream ends.

Associations notwithstanding, in hindsight, I am positive this dream is about work. At the time, I was feeling undervalued and I suspect this dream relates to that somehow.

Severed

2008-05-05T03:03:00.000-07:00

This is a dream I had two days ago.

In this dream, I went from being an observer to an active participant. I started off observing a man and a woman get out of a car and walk into a large mansion-like house. It was a dark night and the car, which was black was parked on a gravel driveway outside the property. The man and the woman were a couple.

Just after they left, I heard the voice of a child, a little girl say something like "Please no, mister!", which immediately got my attention. In my state as the observer, I started searching around for the source of this voice, suspecting the child may be in some kind of trouble. However, as I looked around, I didn't see a child, but I did see a man dressed in black in his mid to late thirties smoking a cigarette in what looked like a child's play area in a park. The park was quite small, and contained a little climbing frame, but I don't remember any specific details about it beyond that.

As I saw this man, I wondered if he too had heard the child, and why he wasn't doing anything about it if he had (he was just casually smoking and paying no heed to anything else). At that point, I became a participant and found myself standing at the top of a small hill that directly overlooked this park. I was about to speak to the unknown man, when I noticed what looked like a ghostly apparition of a young girl appear in the play area. I knew straight away that this was the same girl I heard earlier, only she was actually about 16 or 17 (or so her appearance suggested), which was a direct contradiction to the voice I heard.

I only saw this girl from behind; she appeared to be wearing a pink overcoat, and this was all I could really see of her. She then floated straight through a locked gate to the right of where the man was smoking and continued down a little pathway that lead out of the park. From my position on the hill, I called out to this girl to get her attention, but she didn't respond. Just then, the man said to me "It's no use, she can't respond, she's been severed". I had no idea what he meant, and his words have stuck with me ever since.

I then noticed the girl was heading up the hill and along a path that lead directly to where I was standing. I looked and saw her ghostly form floating towards me, again her pink overcoat was flowing and I could make out a faint black glow that outlined her bodily form. Even though it was me who originally called her, I suddenly became frightened when I thought about what was actually happening (i.e. a ghost was approaching me), and decided to flee in the other direction. So I ran away from this ghost girl and came to another grass hill, which I started to climb. The girl then appeared directly in front of me and at that point, I woke up. Incidentally, I couldn't make out the girl's features at all. All I saw was a hazy black mist.

Associations

The couple : They only played a minor role in this dream, but the couple actually reminded me of a couple at my workplace, only their relationship is on the rocks, as I learned recently. For some reason, they came to mind when I saw the couple in the dream.

The black car : I can think of no particular associations with the black car in this dream.

Child's play area : As mentioned above, it was small and had been locked up (presumably because it was the evening). I had a fight with another kid in the child's play area of a park when I was about 10 years old. I avoided the park for a little while after the incident. My only lingering thought associated with children's play areas is that, whilst fun, they're not very safe and potentially, anything could happen. The park in this dream was in a cage-like enclosure.

The girl : As before, she was actually a teenage girl, but what I heard was the voice of a little child in distress.

The colour pink : ...the pink coat is interesting, simply because it is a colour that has frequented a few of my dreams in the past. Like many I imagine, pink is a colour I associate with women or femininity. Incidentally, the girl's coat stood out all the more as everything else in this dream was dark.

UPDATE (31-1-09): This dream literally haunted me, but its meaning has become clearer to me in hindsight. When I had this dream, I was noticing a rather troubled young lady at my work (I work in a college and she is a student). She caught my eye and I was genuinely concerned for her wellbeing as she looked as though she was having trouble at home... only I had no idea how to approach it particularly as it looked as though no-one else even noticed her (she was always alone too). It used to bug me a lot, because her demeanour was so sad (like a drowned kitten). I read an excellent dream dictionary which purported that mansions symbolise the effect external situations have on us as individuals (ergo, this girl's effect on me by means of my concern for her). The rest of the dream imagery appears to compound this notion too, what with her almost "ghostly", seemingly invisible presence around the place. Perhaps the dream was showing me that if I had gotten involved and tried to help, it may have been more than I was psychologically capable of being able to deal with (hence me running away from the ghost girl).

Interestingly, the couple at the beginning of the dream (whom I thought to be work colleagues who were seeing each other at the time) seem almost linked to this in a prescient manner. The female of the couple was a woman who worked in my office (she's now left). We became friends outside of work, which is how I learned that she had a drinking problem. This is relevant becasue before I even knew about this, I sensed she was also troubled in some way - just like the aforementioned girl. However, it is only now, in retrospect that I have put the two together.

Incidentally, the girl left the college this summer past (could this be what the dream meant by telling me "she" had been "severed"?) and I haven't seen her since. I still wonder about her from time to time as she genuinely looked like she was going through hell. Wherever she is, I can only hope she's OK.

Scars and the Christmas Room

2008-01-31T13:29:00.000-08:00

January 31st 2008

This is the dream with which I will open this blog.

It began with me going to visit somebody I remember from a previous job from about 10 years ago. He was a manager, a small, quiet and very introverted man who most people believed to be a bit strange. Personally, I didn't have many dealings with him and neither did I like him particularly (see the associations section). I was with my mother and my sister. I can't recall anything else about his place of residence in this dream beyond the fact that it all took place in what I assume was his living room. The room itself was dimply lit and coloured in dark red and green. Oddly enough, there were decorations and a sparsely decorated Christmas tree in this room even though it wasn't actually Christmas.

The first thing I saw when I walked in was an unopened Christmas present in a large, rectangular red box which sat on a sofa chair. We all sat down, and the man explained that even though it wasn't Christmas, he kept his room decorated like this because it made him feel "safe" - it was, he explained his refuge from the outside world. We all sat around chatting, but I can't remember what we talked about (I don't even know why we were visiting him). I also fired up a Nintendo Wii that was in the room, but switched it off when I realised no-one wanted to play Tennis with me on the console.

In the second part of the dream, I have an accident with a claw hammer and as a result end up with two deep gashes above my right eye. The first is a small but deep cut, and the second a longer slice that begins from above my outer right eye and ends at the centre spot between both eyes. My mother is also here at this point and is just as shocked as I am by the cuts. My first thought is that I would be permanently disfigured by this and that the scars would make me unattractive to the opposite sex, but I somehow console myself with the though that some women consider scars a sign of rugged manliness.

Then, I am in a hospital getting the scars looked at. The doctor there manages to remove them completely, and I confirm this by looking at my now scar-free face in the mirror. The dream then changes location again and I'm in an industrial estate at night. I'm running around, but I'm not sure where I'm going. On my travels, I encounter people who keep laughing at me, and it is then that I realise that I still have the scars! Everyone I comes across laughs at my scars and some people even want to attack me because of them. I keep running, trying to avoid confronting people who want to hurt me because of my scars whilst, at the same time being baffled by the fact that even though the scars aren't visible the mirror, people can still somehow see them. I then wake up.

Associations

Christmas : Despite my cynicism because of its commercial trappings, Christmas has positive associations for me. It is time I spend with my family (the aforementioned mother and sister). Christmas is something I associate with warmth, togetherness and the "safeness" also felt by the man in the room.

The ex-manager : As before, he was a small, introverted man whom most considered a bit weird. Myself included. He was in his late 40s, unmarried and lived with his parents. I actually used to think he was quite a pathetic, pitiable character and used to wonder what life circumstances would result in someone being the way he was. I felt sorry for him, but despised his apparent weakness of character (or so I saw it).

The unopened present : Surprise. A mystery/unknown quantity.

The Wii : I have one of these. They're a lot of fun. I enjoy introducing it to new people. Most take to it, but some don't - just like the dream.

The scars : The bigger scar resembled one I have on my left leg from an accident I had on holiday when I was about 7 or 8, where I cut my leg open on a tin. This was also a very deep scar.

Disfigurement angst/hospital : I was actually in hospital last summer for about a week due to a rare kidney illness which eventually cleared up. Prior to my admission, my body swelled up, with some of the swelling showing on my face. Both my mother and myself were concerned about the facial swelling, and I wondered if it would be permanent (it wasn't).

These are the main elements and associations. It's still early days, so I don't have any interpretive thoughts yet.

Update (5-5-08)

After a lot of thought and introspection, I come to what I think is an explanation of the first part of this dream. At the time, I was going through a very introverted phase where I was not interacting socially very much at all for reasons I won't go into here. I'm normally quite a social person, but I was going through a dark period. I'd come home from work and stay home and even when I did go out at the weekends, it was not for very long. At the same time, I was substituting actual relationships with the opposite sex with fantasy, having effectively "given up" on relationships in general. What I feel this dream was doing was warning me about my attitude at the time. It was showing me that my willful introversion was isolating me, keeping me in my own little world that I thought was "safe", but was ultimately harmful.

The unopened present was the dream' way of symbolically reminding me that by shutting myself off, I'd be left with no-one with whom to share what I have of myself (if you get my meaning); a gift, but with no-one to give it to. I believe there were also sexual connotations too, due to both the colour and shape of the box. The shabby Christmas decorations represented the ultimate decay that would result in following this path.

However, the most obvious representation of the unhealthiness of this forced solitude was the ex-manager. As I described, he was a quiet, introverted man that was also very lonely. Characters from dreams are always representations parts of yourself, no matter who they resemble, so by using this guy, the dream was trying to tell me something about myself at the time. It was a warning of what I myself might become if I didn't do something about it.

The part with me trying to get the other people in the room to play on the Wii can be explained thus. Obviously, "I" represented my ego in this dream, which, whilst not wanting the state of solitude suggested above, had chosen to allow it to happen. The unwillingness of the others to participate in a "game" or to do something "fun" was the dream's way of showing me that the state of being I was in at the time was slowly draining my libido.

Introduction

2008-01-31T13:17:00.000-08:00

What you will find here, is a series of my own dreams. Unless you know me personally or care about such things most of this will hold little interest for you, but if you are curious about my subconscious musings or dreams in general, then please read on.

I have come to realise this is a very vast and incredibly deep area, and I'm no psychoanalyst, so my musings are purely speculative. If you have anything you wish to contribute in relation to anything I write here, then feel free to comment. I'll be interested in your thoughts.

I also post at this forum, in which people post and interpret others' dreams. I also recommend this dream dictionary here, which I have found to be very useful.